Main cast: Katie Stevens (Harper), Will Brittain (Nathan), Lauryn McClain (Bailey), Andrew Caldwell (Evan), Shazi Raja (Angela), Schuyler Helford (Mallory), and Samuel Hunt (Sam)
Directors: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods
Meet Harper. Her boyfriend Sam is an alcoholic that, recently, starting hitting her. Sadly, this could be history repeating itself, as her father was abusive too. When Haunt opens, she carefully covers the bruise below her right eye with make-up.
Oh, and meet her friends Bailey (sassy, black), Angela (dressed as a nurse for Halloween), and Mallory (dressed as… uh, something nice) and the two guys they meet while club hopping, Nathan (whom Bailey sees often at her gym) and Nathan’s friend Evan. Nathan’s personality boils down to being Harper’s potential love interest.
Can you guess whom the final girl in this movie is?
These people all go into what seems like a regular haunted maze attraction for Halloween, and sure enough, the scares are real… and so are the kills. Let’s pretend to be in suspense as to which one of these people will end up being the one to beat the villains at their game, shall we?
Eli Roth has his paws in this movie—he’s one of the producers—and like his works or hate them, these works of his tend to be well produced and gorgeous. This one is no different. It’s almost a shame that the haunted maze isn’t real, because it looks gorgeously scary and it may be worth paying a visit.
Well, the kills are fine, if not particularly gruesome or over the top. However, these kills are much in line with most of the grit and scares here, which tend to fall on the relatively realistic side of things. This is to say, blood doesn’t spray everywhere, limbs don’t fly in all directions when sliced into, et cetera. Considering the more sober tone of this film, this more down to earth kind of gore is pretty refreshing.
I also like how Harper’s victories for the most part are not the improbably capable tiny girl curb-stomping experienced killer twice her size variety. Instead, she uses items around her to gain the upper hand, or sometimes it’s just plain luck. Again, this feels pretty realistic in many ways.
Katie Stevens, normally more well known for playing the sweet lady type for the ten fans of American Idol that remembers her, does a good job here too as playing the only character in the film that has any semblance of depths. Her terrified expressions are pretty effective in raising the tension in a scene.
All things considered, Haunt is an alright film when it comes to delivering a nice diversion on a lazy day. Folks that have seen enough slasher films revolving around a Halloween theme park will be very familiar with the tropes here, however, and it’s also a shame that the characters not named Harper are all cardboard cut-outs going through the motions. So yes, it can be entertaining, so long as folks don’t expect too much from it.
